Most of the questions you may have were covered in the January 29 VACO webinar and in the Q&A provided in that webinar. If you were unable to attend that webinar please review it. It is available on the GI Bill website for you to review or can be reached via: https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/docs/presentations/Colmery_OfficeHours_012020.pdf
Please note/understand the following:
- VACO will always require online training to be completed. Conference attendance will never be your sole means to meeting your annual training requirements under Section 305 of the Colmery Act and is meant to only be secondary.
- VACO has not made the full 5 hours of online content available yet but they advised in the webinar that they are in the process of adding more. Currently for IHLs there is 4.5 hours available and for NCD schools there is 3.5 currently available. Please complete all of the online training that is available to you and keep copies of your training completion certificates.
- I cannot see what training you have completed online and from what we were told in the recent webinar you cannot see that yet either. VACO is tracking all of that and is working on providing you with the ability to see all of your completed training (online and instructor led in person). They have not provided a date when that will be available however. Once again, I suggest that you keep copies of all completed training certificates and record the information regarding any Instructor led training events, such as NAPVA that you attended just to be on the safe side.
- The only conference training that will count is training created by VA Central Office and provided by a VA employee. We are not allowed to modify that training in anyway. VA Central office has made 5 power points available that count for this training, shown as Instructor led in the recent webinar you had with VACO.
NCACVA and I were unable to incorporate the VACO crafted training into our upcoming All School’s meeting due to the timing of when VACO made the materials available and due to the limited time we have available during a one day meeting. The only power point that would have counted for everyone is 2 hours long and thus the entire agenda would have need to be revised. Additionally, that training is very basic and does not cover anything pertaining to the Colmery Act changes, BAH changes, extension sites etc. It is somewhat on par with what I present during my New Certifying Official training sessions.
- There are sessions planned at the VASERVES conference in November that will count toward the required Section 305 training. As that conference falls after the 7/31/20 deadline for this academic year it will not count for this year but those hours can be used toward next year’s requirement if you attend.
VASERVES 2020 November Conference
NOTE: I am not involved in the planning/hosting of this conference can cannot answer questions for you. Please contact the Alabama Veterans Affairs Association with questions.
Attached is an updated flyer for the VASERVES conference in November. Please note that the hotel requires a one night deposit at the time that the reservation is made and to receive the reduced registration rate of $395 you must register prior to July 1, 2020.
Additional information regarding transportation has also been added to the website via the link provided on the flyers:
AVAA website: https://www.avaa.online/conference-information
